FILM REVIEWS / Huffman terrific as a man trying to be a woman

This photo provided by The Weinstein Company shows actors Kevin Zegers as Toby, left, and Felicity Huffman as Bree in a scene from "Transamerica." Huffman received two nominations, best dramatic actress in a film for her role as a man preparing for sex-change surgery in this film and best actress in a TV musical or comedy for "Desperate Housewives." (AP Photo/The Weinstein Company/Jessica Miglio) Ran on: 12-14-2005
Heath Ledger, top, gets a best actor nomination, and Woody Allen's &quo;Match Point&quo; is up for best picture, screenplay and director. PHOTO PROVIDED BY THE WEINSTEIN COMPANY. less

This photo provided by The Weinstein Company shows actors Kevin Zegers as Toby, left, and Felicity Huffman as Bree in a scene from "Transamerica." Huffman received two nominations, best dramatic actress in a ... more

Photo: JESSICA MIGLIO

Photo: JESSICA MIGLIO

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This photo provided by The Weinstein Company shows actors Kevin Zegers as Toby, left, and Felicity Huffman as Bree in a scene from "Transamerica." Huffman received two nominations, best dramatic actress in a film for her role as a man preparing for sex-change surgery in this film and best actress in a TV musical or comedy for "Desperate Housewives." (AP Photo/The Weinstein Company/Jessica Miglio) Ran on: 12-14-2005
Heath Ledger, top, gets a best actor nomination, and Woody Allen's &quo;Match Point&quo; is up for best picture, screenplay and director. PHOTO PROVIDED BY THE WEINSTEIN COMPANY. less

This photo provided by The Weinstein Company shows actors Kevin Zegers as Toby, left, and Felicity Huffman as Bree in a scene from "Transamerica." Huffman received two nominations, best dramatic actress in a ... more

"Transamerica" provides the frame and the occasion for one of the year's best performances, Felicity Huffman's as a woman trapped in a man's body who's passing for female while awaiting a sex-change operation. The film is not about the sex change but about an adventure that presents itself about a week before the operation: She finds out that she is a father and that her teenage son is in jail in New York.

Though Huffman is not the only good thing in the movie, she brings so much to it and subtly enlivens it to the extent that it's difficult to imagine it without her. Her performance requires that she, in essence, play someone who is playing someone else. She is really Stanley, but she has become "Bree" thanks to a series of surgeries, a daily regime of hormones and rigorous self-discipline. She is rigid with control, consciously moderating her voice and tone and presenting only the facial expressions that she has mastered in the mirror. Huffman's shoulders carry the weight of a life spent being careful, so as to pass, so as to avoid getting beaten up, so as to avoid being treated like a freak.

Significantly, Huffman does this across the sex divide. That's important to remember. She is a woman playing a man playing a woman, which requires that she not ease into playing the woman side of her own nature, even as she's playing a man who's doing everything he can to seem womanly. And that's just the beginning of what Huffman does. The gender ramifications are just part of the story.

There's also the way Huffman depicts Bree reacting to her circumstances. This is a person of obvious intelligence, who is middle-aged and from a reasonably well-off family. Yet we see her working in menial jobs. What happened? Were there lost years? A drug problem? We never know, and yet again, that history is in Huffman's tense shoulders and her weary expression. She has the essence of someone who has gone through life as an alien, desperate to be known and yet hoping not to be noticed -- someone who at the same time has come into a certain self-knowledge and dignity, through mistakes and quiet suffering. This isn't critical fantasizing. This is all in the way Huffman looks, talks and moves, and she's extraordinary.

What's more, it comes as a relief to find this performance in such a relaxed, human film, and not a social polemic. For most of the way, "Transamerica" is a quirky comedy. Bree leaves her modest apartment in Los Angeles and flies to New York, where she bails her 17-year-old son out of jail. Without identifying herself as the boy's father -- but rather as a lady from the church -- she sets about driving back across the country, hoping that she might unload the boy somewhere along the way, perhaps at his stepfather's house. The film's title refers to both transsexuality and to the journey spanning the continent.

The gulf between Bree's bizarre appearance and her church-lady manner and aspirations provides the source for much of the humor, and in that sense, Bree is a little like Fred Gwynne's Herman Munster. But the movie is never mean to her. It's equally understanding of her family, including her horrified mother (Fionnula Flanagan) and rowdy, ne'er-do-well sister, who's played with self-deprecating wit by Carrie Preston. The film's intelligent compassion also extends to the son (Kevin Zegers, who is as handsome as the young Alain Delon). The son could have been just another aggrieved young wise guy, but instead we're aware of his real need for parental love.

In American mythology, from Mark Twain's "Roughing It" through "Thelma & Louise," taking off on the open road has always been an occasion for self-discovery. While Bree is not the usual hero or heroine, the road has the same salutary effect on her, and it's interesting to watch Huffman register the progress of that inner transformation. My only quibble with "Transamerica," not big but nagging, is that it ends with one of the characters in a very ugly place. Even that would be all right, if the movie acknowledged that ugliness. Instead it glosses over it, as though everything were fine.

-- Advisory: This film contains full frontal nudity, strong language, drug use and a false penis.